Monster Hunter Wilds lead was also crushed by Monster Hunter World's brutal decoration RNG: "I ended up finishing the game without having completed my build"

Monster Hunter World was notoriously stingy with its gem-like socketed decorations, especially with rarer ones that could easily unlock essential skills that otherwise required specific armor pieces. Bad luck could make your dream build much harder to craft. Thankfully, Monster Hunter Wilds uses a similar gearing system but ensures decorations can be crafted to guarantee key skills, which is good news for the countless folks who got burned in World, including Monster Hunter Wilds art and executive director Kaname Fujioka, who directed the original Monster Hunter and has been with the series ever since.

Fujioka, with Wilds director Yuya Tokuda, spoke to IGN about the decoration system in Wilds. As we previously saw firsthand, Wilds largely splits offensive and defensive skills between weapons and armor respectively, so slotting in the right decorations to round out your setup will be even more important than in previous games.

"Decorations are currently similar to the system in World, with decorations having specific skill abilities," Tokuda explains. "These skills are still activated by placing them into weapon or armor slots (in Wilds, weapon and armor skills can each be activated separately). However, you can make single-skill decorations through something like alchemy. So in [Wilds], players won't have the issue of never being able to get a specific skill."

This will prevent a repeat of the relatable nightmare that Fujioka, a devout lance main who, like me, struggled to get a Guard Up decoration to drop in World. "I never ended up getting it once," Fujioka said. "My Shield Jewel 2... I ended up finishing the game without having completed my build."

The decoration grind in World was so painful that, once the game came to PC, a sizable group of players quickly turned to mods to cheat in the ones they wanted, either to match the collection they had on console or to save the time and headache of RNG. With this issue resolved for Wilds, the next question is how we'll get talismans or charms, which have historically bundled multiple skills and decoration slots into one special equipment slot. World had random decorations but craftable charms, while Monster Hunter Rise used the opposite setup, just as games like Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate did previously. Wilds may do the same, but charm power and acquisition is still unclear. However it shakes out, Wilds is already a step up from World's itemization.

Monster Hunter Wilds is already shaping up to be a multiplayer powerhouse that defines 2025.